In brief
- Cantor Equity Partners 1 is in late-stage talks to form a $4B Bitcoin treasury with Blockstream founder Adam Back.
- The SPAC would receive 30,000 BTC and raise up to $800M in outside capital to expand holdings.
- The deal follows Cantor’s earlier $3.9B Bitcoin venture with Tether, Bitfinex, and SoftBank.
A Cantor Fitzgerald-backed investment vehicle is in late-stage discussions to acquire nearly $4 billion in crypto amid an industry surge in special purpose acquisition company activity.
Cantor Equity Partners 1, a blank-check vehicle led by U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s son, Brandon, would receive as much as 30,000 BTC from Blockstream Capital founder Adam Back, The Financial Times reported on Tuesday, citing two sources familiar with the matter.
The agreement would also include raising as much as $800 million in outside capital for additional Bitcoin purchases, setting the total value of the deal above $4 billion.
The talks follow Cantor Fitzgerald’s April agreement to create a SPAC-backed Bitcoin treasury firm, dubbed Twenty One, with a planned $3.9 billion war chest, backed by Tether, Bitfinex, and SoftBank.
The exact value of the proposed deal remains unclear. Neither Cantor Equity Partners 1 nor Blockstream Capital immediately responded to Decrypt’s request for comment.
The discussions come as crypto investors turn to SPACs or reverse mergers to take their crypto-related ventures public under a favorable atmosphere supported by President Donald Trump’s administration.
In May, Nakamoto Holdings, founded by David Bailey of Bitcoin Magazine, announced that it had raised $710 million for its own Bitcoin treasury firm, which it planned to take public through a merger with KindlyMD, Inc.
A month later, the Anthony Pompliano-led ProCap Financial joined the fray, revealing it had raised more than $750 million to go public through a SPAC with Columbus Circle Capital.
The talks also come as a growing number of public companies begin to add Bitcoin to their balance sheets, in a bid to emulate Michael Saylor’s software firm, Strategy’s playbook.
More than 142 publicly-traded companies now hold Bitcoin, according to the latest figures from bitcointreasuries.net. Those companies have acquired a combined $112 billion worth, with Strategy’s holdings accounting for roughly two-thirds of that amount.
Cantor Equity Partners 1 raised $200 million in cash in an initial public offering at the beginning of the year, according to a statement from the firm.